On May 2, 2014, at 4:40 AM, Carlos <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

> Has anyone developed rules for generating gov-law-tech-pop codes for multiple states in balkanized worlds, given the world UWP? I seem to remember some discussions in the list and even somebody writing on this at some point, but after some quick searches I came away empty-handed.
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> One could just generate several UWPs with fixed physical data, and also use the "Governments" article on Freelance Traveller for more detail. I was thinking of rules which do not treat each government independently, but rather determine whether there are dominant powers and how many, then flesh them out. There are global constraints to consider. For instance, total world population needs to be split up among countries, law level needs to be somewhat consistent with that of the countries (A pop-weighted average? That of the largest country? That of the country hosting the main starport?). Also, if there are exactly two dominant countries/blocks in a planet, it is unlikely that one is hi-tech, hi-pop and the other one low-tech, low-pop, so there ought to be modifiers.
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This has started wheels turning in my head, and some thoughts come to mind immediately:

For planetary UWP:

Law level = “Law level where the Imperial Starport resides on the planet”

This will be the first polity you hit at the extrality line.

Tech Level = “Highest of the major powers” You could have smaller countries with higher tech levels, but the main economic/political powers will likely govern interstellar trade.

Main powers will almost certainly be within 1TL of each other, 2 is really pushing it; it’s too easy to reverse engineer,  steal or simply negotiate for manufacturing know-how, and if you’re large enough to be a major power on the planet, you have the resources to do this.

(for example, China’s contract with Boeing for airliners explicitly included technology transfer agreements… "We’re buying N aircraft from you, but you have to teach us how to build them.")

I think the simplest approach would be to generate the world from scratch, then building a planetary UWP from that.

Major/minor designations would be largely population based. roll 1D6 for major powers, 2, 3 or even 4d6 for minors. (At this point writing a program to build out the world is advisable :-) Major powers will be 75-90% of the population, and will likely be relatively close to each other in population and TL.

Trying to emulate Earth might be problematic (China is the biggest, in terms of population, India is second, but any sane analysis of socioeconomic politics of the world would not place India as the 'second power’.) but this is a game, after all.

I suspect planetary dominance would be a function of Population and TL. High pop but lower TL will offset Lower Pop but higher TL, or just randomly choose a primary dominant power.

Smaller powers will run the gamut, but again, won’t vary more than two TL’s barring special circumstances.

UWP Metadata, like rich, poor, agricultural, industrial would be slippery to pin down. The US for example: is it an industrial or agricultural ‘world’? What about China?

Why a planet has multiple governments is an important starting point to describing the actual world.

If, for example, it’s as a result of actual ‘balkanization’ like what happened in the Balkans, there will be several Major powers, lots of minors ones, lots of wars (cold, hot, guerrilla and bush), distrust between countries, and fiddly and baroque trade rules.

(“We will charge you a 3% tariff on all wheat imported to Smithsylvania, unless it’s grown by those accursed heathens in Jonesistan, which get charged a 30% tariff, in retaliation for their unreasonable tariffs on Smithsylvanian kitchen widgets, our main industry!”)

These will be happy fun places for PC types to play, intrigue, bush wars, smuggling, espionage abound.

Some worlds will have multiple governments as a result of long ago colonization efforts ("Our planet was colonized from three other worlds, so the colonies, later countries, of St. Eneri, Roushaggistan and the Hirosaki Collective grew simultaneously, and the world was never united under a single rule.”

The three powers may or may not be antagonistic, and alliances may shift this week: “We have always been at war with “Roushaggistan” next week: "“We have always been at war with “St. Eneri”!)

Finally, given human nature, it could well be that the Gov/Law/TL portion of the UWP of *any* world above, say, a few million inhabitant represents merely the predominant power on the planet and/or where the Imperial starport resides, and they’re ALL ‘Balkanized’ on a closer examination.

The scale at which the OTU is described is rather broad.

--
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs